On Thursday, 1 September 2016 at 05:37:50 UTC, Manu wrote:
So, consider a set of overloads:

  void f(T)(T t) if(isSomething!T) {}
  void f(T)(T t) if(isSomethingElse!T) {}
  void f(T)(T t) {}

I have a recurring problem where I need a fallback function like the bottom one, which should be used in lieu of a more precise match. This is obviously an ambiguous call, but this is a pattern that comes up an awful lot. How to do it in D?

I've asked this before, and people say:

  void f(T)(T t) if(!isSomething!T && !isSomethingElse!T) {}

Consider that more overloads are being introduced by users spread out across many modules that define their own kind of T; this solution is no good.

In the past, I have suggested using the "default" keyword to specify a fallback function of this kind. I think it's a useful pattern for generic algorithms that have optimized variants on specific types for performance.

   void f(T)(T t) if(isSomething!T) {}
   void f(T)(T t) if(isSomethingElse!T) {}
   void f(T)(T t) default {}

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